a cicada
eats itself whole a cicada
isn’t scared of you.
At the hotel,
the sky was.
A gold balloon
shaped like #1 flew
past the mountain & I
wasn’t scared of you.
*
#1 could be for a
baby or day, but
not for scars, there are
too many scars on my
body & most bodies to say
which came first.
I will / would never forgive
all you bad men
if not for
all of us,
all of us, just being
kids, catching numbers.
I guess I will forgive you.
*
In a #1 moment,
the sun
the sun
the sun
Went down.
FINALIST MERCY 2023
Jo O’Lone-Hahn is an androgynous writer based in the South. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Peripheries, Black Warrior Review, New Delta Review, Posit, and elsewhere. They received their MFA in poetry from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and they are a PEN America Prison Writing Mentor. They were a finalist for the 2023 DIAGRAM chapbook prize.